Category: General

In time he noticed that his glass was empty and went to the bar to have it refilled. He had never been terribly interested in other women, never really been conscious of their existence. Emily had smoothly entered his life and just as gently taken over. The whole arrangement was perfect, but for some reason however. when the barmaid turned and bent down for a beer bottle on the lower shelf, he became aware of the gleam of the lighting reflecting off the shiny surface of the stretched satin of her frock and as she straightened and turned once again, he saw her for the first time as a woman, not a bottle opener. She was slim, neat and smiling, with dark hair and piquant face. There was no coquetry in her gestures but there was no doubt in his mind that she must have been a great asset to the establishment, He took his refilled glass to his corner and resumed his seat but now his mind was shared by a mouse and a pretty girl.

She was ringing up a sale on the cash register, her face obscured to his. He looked past her head to see a dimpled whisky bottle, full, on the shelf above the till, he thought once more of the mouse. His mind wandered again and he remembered that Emily had once said that the young woman who lived next door to them saved sixpences in a bottle such as this, he wondered if Emily would like to save sixpences too, the whisky would be a useful reserve against the winter colds. He had always enjoyed the hot whisky, sugar and lemon his mother had given him and he could not recall ever having had it since Emily had taken over. On his way out of the Public House he stilled his conscience and treated himself to a dimpled bottle of whisky with a smile from a young woman as discount

The lodging-house bed-sitter was chill and cheerless, The television set was hardly functioning and the mean gas fire only half worked, as one of the lattice china elements was broken, causing the flame at that end of the stove to flicker with a green and yellow light. He wedged himself in the lumpy armchair, placed the bottle he had purchased upon a table at his elbow and settled down to perfunctorily watch the programme that was, from time to time, rolling over and over in front of his eyes. He debated whether he should open the bottle. He felt that if he arrived with it intact, he might be criticised for excessive expenditure. On the other hand if he could explain that it was essential to entertain delegates at these conventions, he could justify both the expense and the broken seal. He commenced to drink the health of his absent colleagues, a diversion from his norm which was both uncharacteristic, and new.

The level of the liquid in the bottle steadily lowered and surprisingly the level of dejection within him lowered in concert. Suddenly the lamp in the room went out and the television picture dissolved to a tiny blue spot in the centre of the screen, finally to be reluctantly extinguished. He sat in the flickering gloom helped only by the gas fire, staring sightlessly at the screen. There was no light on the lamp standard outside his window; a power cut. He filled his glass again and settled back in the chair to await developments. He stared steadily at the bottle and in his imagination he once again saw the gentle little mouse sitting upright in its glass prison begging for release. As he drank, the bottle seemed, in the flickering firelight, to become larger until the image became confused with the television screen. Its shape became more squat and the mouse within grew more obese. The mouse moved. It raised one paw to its long nose and rubbed it. The face of the mouse slowly transformed until it was a caricature of its former self, with every feature still mousey, perhaps even more so, but at the same time somehow human. The mouse turned its strange face towards his, its nose was now red, its chin more receding and the fur on its head longer. Again it made the gesture with the talons of its paw towards its nose. Emily had that mannerism too. He had never been aware of it until the mouse had drawn his attention to it. She always carried a tight ball of tiny damp handkerchief in her waistline pocket and would continually squeeze it round the tip of her twitching nose with her forefinger and thumb, twisting her head away with a jerk at the same time, to avoid the pain of a self-inflicted pinch.

He looked closely at the mouse and found that it too was pinching its nose and twisting its head. As he looked, he realised that the mouse was also achieving that red tip to its long snout that Emily had at the end of her beak. Her beak? Her snout? He was confused. The mouse was now sitting in its huge bottle with its paws relaxed across his rotund abdomen, staring at him. The receding chin, the red twitching nose with its continual sniff and the straggly mouse coloured hair was more than reminiscent they were carbon copies of Emily; horrifyingly so.

He vaguely felt guilty at his new conception of Emily. Looking into the huge bottle, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘they’, sat complacently staring at him with beady eyes. Emily’s beady eyes, over Emily’s shapeless figure. The long whiskers twitched and he sat upright in his chair, suffused with shame and horror that he should have enlikened this obscene creature to his Emily

The mouse spoke to him with Emily’s voice and, like the recording of a theme once held dear, but distorted with constant repetition, he heard the mouse-strosity invite him to take his tea. From his dispassionate standpoint outside of the circumference of a small family circle, his perceptions magnified through the glass of the whisky bottle, he was made aware that the voice calling to him had overtones of the pained forbearance of a mother calling to her errant son. He shrank into the uncomfortable depths of his chair.

For the fraction of an instant the electricity was restored and the room became warmly lighted and normal. For more than that, the image of the bright room remained in his inner vision after the room had once more been thrust into darkness and the juxtaposition of the bottle and the television set were once more correctly orientated in his mind. He lifted the bottle and weighed it in his hands before pouring another drink into his glass. He half expected to see the Emily mouse staring up at him in the firelight, but the bottle had lost its captive rodent, the vacant space now being filled with an emotion compounded of relief turgidly overlaid with drunken disillusionment. He sagged, but was suddenly straightened in his chair by a voice, a voice he knew well, using tones he had never heard before. The Emily mouse glared at him from a gigantic screen, with every mole, every imperfection standing out on its grotesque face like the gnarled and quarried escarpment of a once pleasant and familiar mountain. It screamed and pointed with its craggy and taloned paw, at him accusingly. He looked to the point at which the red-rimmed watery eyes were transfixed and saw that it was the bottle that he still held in his hand, with a gentle waving motion within. He raised it to his now bloodshot eyes for   closer inspection, to find that the new captive was the lissome figure of the barmaid, more beautiful, more delicate and completely unattainable. Her satin frock had been transformed into a black diaphanous web, her capable hands had changed to the delicate floating fingers of a Pavlova. As she turned her well-modelled head, from contemplation of the apparition in the screen, to look at his, he saw that her once serene face was contorted with an expression of loathing contempt. He raised the empty bottle to his face, he wanted to talk to her, to plead his case, to convince her that he was not in subjection to this ‘thing’, that his taste was not so distorted, but before he could make an utterance, the pointing, accusing paw went to grab the bottle from his hands, he resisted, and in the melee the neck smashed off against the arm of the chair.

There was a stillness in the room, unbroken but for the sounds of the flickering fire and the dull tap of the blood as it drained down the wrist, across the limp palm and fell from the lifeless fingers to the carpet beside the shattered bottle, The fire still flickered

The convention had not been a frost, it had been a disaster

Several months ago I thought it had little future, as in dribs and drabs I had laid out the autobiography interspersed with comments on life today. My life now runs on strict lines, with little worth reporting. In the field of comments, it is difficult to find anything to say that has not already been broached by the media.

Twice I have considered stopping the whole thing. Recently my Dutch friend Jan took me to task for considering changing the format, and I think he was right. So now it is time for another experiment. Over this weekend I shall publish the short story that I wrote many many years ago. It doesn’t seem to have aged and my conscience – that Dutchman called Jan, said I should publish it, so I shall; it will be interesting to see the stats.

Starting on Monday, on weekdays only, I shall revive selections of my autobiography, in chronological order, for the benefit of those who have not read them. This too will be an experiment. At weekends I will post items I care about, preferably current.

I would like to thank all those of you who read my blog, I have found it more than interesting, invigorating perhaps, because there is this desire to please, and the stats tend to guide me what pleases and what doesn’t !.

I shall find it interesting to see the reaction to the new approach. So here’s to the next ‘Oldgaffer’.

The recent death of a very old and well loved friend made me examine closely my own condition, where I now have only two close, male friends of long-standing, and one is in Holland.

In the 70s I was under extreme pressure and would have given anything to pack up my job, and go to sea as a deckhand on an oil tanker. When the Gaffer said ‘paint’ I would paint, when he said ‘Stop’ I would stop. I wouldn’t have to make decisions, I would hardly have to think, and I would fill in my free time with reading, writing, dozing, or a hobby. However it takes a special type of person to be able to live under these conditions, year in and year out, yet many do in nursing homes.

One of the problems of very old age is that you have outlived nearly all your closest friends, those you have grown up with, those you have made through life. In old age one tends, through various circumstances, to move house and inevitably this takes you away from those you know. Making real friends in old age is both difficult and unlikely, with the result one is thrown very much on to one’s own resources, and if they are meagre, life can be very sterile. Some, who have led very busy business lives, with little time for hobbies and outside interests, suddenly find themselves bored and lonely. I believe to them the day stretches very long. There are also those very crippled, mentally or physically. In visiting relatives, friends and acquaintances of my age and younger, in ‘homes’, ‘nursing homes’ clinics, convalescent homes and the rest, whether they are plush, or not so plush, they appear to me like an open prison. I am not criticising those running the homes, but the system as it is today. The inmates are not graded, not catered for in similar groups; they are lumped together, ranging from the intelligent and alert to the aggressive and the comatose. What brought it to my attention keenly was the friend, allegedly with dementia, possibly responding to medication, who confided in me over a coffee in a restaurant, that he wasn’t sure how long he could stick having no intelligent conversation for days on end. One I visited lived in a small, dark bedroom, facing north, with no sun and a poor view. He couldn’t face the ‘lounge’ because the predominance of occupants was in the later stages of dementia, with all that implies. I could go on but it would be repetition ad nausea.

Some are there because of the loss of the extended family. Once, the family rallied round and purely by being among the family gave stimulation and assurance. In these homes the ambience is not conducive to stimulation – on the contrary, even hospital is better, the nurses and the bustle alone are stimulating. I appreciate there are Day Centres for the elderly to attend, but that only occupies part of the day and not everyday. In my experience TV only puts them to sleep. Without stimulation, coupled with medication, many sleep most of the day, and that is what is affecting the likes of my friends, it is like living in a waxworks museum. In time unable to hold out any longer, they will join the sleeping majority. They deserve better. We need to seek ways of stimulating them

We are busy setting foreign countries to rights, looking after animals and overseas charities. The Sally Anne and other charities look after the poor and the under privileged as best their resources allow, we have charities including Help The Aged. I find it strange that the aged at the end of their days are not as well catered for – some people are even concerned about battery hens – how about incarcerated old ladies and gentlemen?

I have found some local voluntary organisations suffer from infighting and lack of stamina, so the product is very variable. If this condition of the elderly in homes is to be alleviated, professional, paid speakers, entertainers and the like must be maintained on an annual basis to rotate through all residencies, or have groups taken to attend the speakers etc. I recently posted a piece about the ‘Golden Rivet’, and in it I stress that the expectation of an event, even if it doesn’t live up to the publicity can keep a crew gossiping and alert for weeks, let alone days, and if it is a real success, for days after. Anticipation being better than realisation is all that is needed to lift moral, interest and to stimulate.

I have written about euthanasia, and its need especially for those who have no wish to continue living. The law demands facts to operate, yet it denies those who seek euthanasia for a valid reason, the legal right to end their life by professional help. If the law cannot prove that euthanasia is truly a crime, not just an infringement of the laws of a proposition, it should be accepted conditionally.

Going up pipes, down manholes, through tunnels, into dark dank corners, beneath the sea, beneath roads and ground, deep or shallow, in compressed air or in sludge and sewage, was ever the lot of the inspection engineer. Nature has instilled in us all an instinct for self-preservation, which translates to reactions varying from being startled, through apprehension, to blind terror. The degree varies from person to person and from situation to situation. Controlling fear is second nature, helped by adrenaline, and often called upon for the most unprepossessing reasons. Take one instance. I was Resident Engineer on a large contract, constantly under the eye of all of the site workmen. Men in heavy engineering, with their own values, judge you by their own competence, not yours. You have to be prepared to go where you intend sending them, and understand and, within reason, be able to do, what you expect of them. Hesitate and authority is gone. A sheet steel cofferdam, – a steel box – had been constructed off shore to resist the waves and the tides. Access consisted of a slightly springy, eighty foot long, U shaped pile, providing a foot wide walkway over a twenty foot chasm without a hand rail. The men were used not only to running up and down this ribbon of steel but on the tops of the piles and thought nothing of it. For my part, I was in a blue funk. Constructed from birth with a high centre of gravity, I have no confidence without a handhold. With something to grip I’ll go anywhere, up ladders, factory chimneys, I even went to the top of a mast of a ship at sea. Ask me to cross a band of scree or rocks up a mountain or at the sea shore and I become tentative. Under scrutiny I had no choice, I went up that beam and returned. Technically the walkway was not safe, it had no handrail – but I had to make the visit, honour demanded it, to do otherwise would have been a clear admission of fear. The next time I went, and for ever after, there was a handrail. My self-esteem had been upheld, but at some psychological expense.

On the destroyer, at Action-Stations – mostly in alleged mine fields – my station was in an office in the lowest part of the ship, and we were battened down as was everyone else below decks. On the first occasion I was acutely apprehensive, but one can’t remain afraid for ever and it became just a routine. On a ship on the Russian Run, a man I trained with drowned in similar circumstances as the ship was holed but not sunk.During the Blitz in London, if I wasn’t off fire watching, I rarely got up, but one night our district in South London was getting a battering and my Mother and I sat under the stairs. A stick of 6 to 8 bombs, exploding successively, started some considerable distance away and we heard them getting closer until they crossed us and continued away from us. My Mother never normally evinced emotion, but that night I witnessed almost stark terror. By comparison, at 16-17 I and my friends were not so much fearful, as excited by everything to do with the war, the guns on the commons, the shrapnel falling like red hot rain, and fire watching at nights. ‘Crossing the line’ at the Equator, on our way to Africa, aged six, I was afraid of the ceremony to come, and had to steel myself. Fear is as much in the imagination as anything, and those among us with vivid imaginations, suffer more than others, and have to control their anxieties more.

In the past we have been burgled six times in all, and as a result I have what I refer to as burglaritis. If something creaks or bumps, even if I’m asleep. I cannot rest until I have prowled the house to be sure no one has broken in. Because I subconsciously think I’m wasting my time I have no fear, what I would be like faced with a couple of masked men in the house would be something entirely different – probably extreme rage, with murder in my heart.

Fear, I believe, is a reflex, given us by nature for protection and self preservation. Time and experience modifies it, even to the point where we are not aware of fear in the most hazardous circumstances, when urgency, concern for others and experience takes over. To denigrate fear in others shows a lack of appreciation of the make up of fear and the degrees to which it can affect, even paralyse.

A few days ago I went to Belfast for the first time for several months, and was surprised to find the number of men women and children, from Eastern European countries, who were begging in the street. When you consider our Northern Ireland history, and the fact that we are an outpost of the UK, it gives some guide to the number of immigrants residing in Britain today. I draw your attention to a piece I wrote a long time ago entitled Beef Dripping, in which I tell a true story of a Water Board official who found that a row of houses that he wished to enter were owned by a man and wife, she sold iron holders, while he sang, outside Woolworths in Balham High Road. I have since been very sceptical of the needs of those who beg. What is more, I fail to understand, if the purpose of the immigrants is to swell our workforce, how and why are these people allowed to beg in the street?

My grandmother had a phrase ‘over egging it’ which implied excess in some form or another. I believe the current government is over egging the supply of identity cards, for its own purposes, and dragging its feet at the same time because it knows its proposition is unpopular. In ’39 we were all issued with identity cards and gas masks at the cost to the Exchequer. Now it is suggested that we are to be forced to have identity cards with a vast amount of personal information on them, at our own expense. The fact that we require identity cards nowadays is patent, but their purpose should surely be for identity verification, not every function that the government can slap on to them, and because it is a national need, they should be free of cost to the individual. If we need to have a card with personal information other than our identity, then we can obtain that at our own cost. As the immigrant situation and crime in this country are both now at a serious level, identity cards are clearly essential to help clamp down on illegal entry and crime of every sort, The Banks are always begging us to take out more cards, perhaps they could supply the other cards free of charge, with the additional information the government wishes us to carry.

The obvious corollary from discussing this burgeoning immigrant problem, is the effect on housing. If we’re having hundreds or thousands of people every month entering this country, they have to be housed somewhere. We are told that we need them to fill vacancies in our workforce. Clearly this is at the expense of those young people trying to get on the housing ladder, and either failing to, or being forced to undertake swingeing mortgages, rising in value daily, just to find somewhere to live. This is heinous. Like the penal system, the government does not apply cause and effect to the way it governs. I understand that it is currently possible to buy a house, do nothing to it, and in a month or so, resell it at a considerable profit. It doesn’t take the mind of an Einstein to assess that this is totally wrong, and that something should be done about it, to halt this incredible escalation in house pricing.

Our leaders take a notion, discuss it among themselves, without consulting us at all, act on it even though it can cost billions,. There are so many instances; the greatest one of all, of course, is space travel, space stations and all those other scientific toys that the men in white coats like playing with. Apart from a few discoverers, new materials, and new processes, and also apart from the benefits of satellites, I don’t think we’ve got value for money. The newspapers, the TV, the men in white coats, most of all, had a ball, but I’m not so sure that the world is a better place for having a few hundred tonnes of space machinery flying overhead, 24/7. I simply can’t believe the rumour that President Bush has a stake in a tract on the moon. On second thoughts I can.

A lot of it is naturally to do with image and saving face; the idea and its implementation is about image, – not my image, their image – and when things begin to go wrong, they then pump more money in to save face. A prime, if silly example of this is that of the plastic tent in Docklands, the Dome. A high proportion of the populace was against that at the time, and even more so now, but every now and again it raises its tired head and someone feeds it a few more thousands, and then it stands idle for another bit. They’re busy talking about hosting the Olympic Games, mainly in London, and already the budget has become so big, the claw-back will appear like a scratch. .The aspect of it which takes me to the fair is the fact that people on the outskirts of Britain and the UK, will be asked to pay for it, when they haven’t a hope of being able to afford to actually go to see it, because the fares and the lodging costs will be exorbitant, presupposing that one is really interested any more in sports where drug abuse seems to be the route to success.. What the hell any way? No matter where it is held, we will see bits on telly!

Some time ago I was amazed to discover just how much three minutes of advertising time can cost to make, we’re talking in millions, and the government is not averse to forking out for some indoctrinating pieces about subjects we have all been made aware of in the press, such as obesity, the environment, and so on. If one were cynical one might think that the powers that be have a toe in an advertising company, it is so prevalent. I personally am convinced that this money could be better spent on helping the disadvantaged back into a sensible lifestyle, instead of the existence so many have, by providing ‘information and help’ centres, coupled with simple recreational facilities that will brighten their lives, increase communication, and just might improve their outlook which in turn could improve their future.

All sorts of figures are bandied about for the cost of maintaining a person in the penal system. One thing I am sure of is that it is pretty excessive, and that we’re not getting value for money from it. It is commonly stated the prison is an advanced educational facility to teach crime. Someone relatively innocent by nature, and in there fore some minor infraction, will be hardened, and taught criminal ways and possibly induced into drug addiction.. I cannot believe that this is the way to get value for money.

You may not agree with all that I have said, or even half of it, but if any of it is true, the amount of money that is being wasted is in millions. It’s an interesting exercise if you have nothing better to do, to sit and list in your mind all the areas where you know for a fact that there is simply a waste, put a nominal figure on each and tot them up, the answer is frightening. We are being taxed to pay for things that we think are unnecessary but have no voice to raise against them. Surely it is wrong, when a government official, faced with an audience where not a single hand is raised in agreement with the proposal put forward, says that they’re going ahead anyway and does so. Surely this is anarchy, going against the basic principles of democracy

Having been through the religious mill, from complete certainty, through doubting, to agnosticism and finally to atheism, I am fairly aware of the different degrees of religious belief from the fanatical to the dilettante. It is therefore unwise and unfair to openly denigrate belief in whatever God, as there are those who rely on their religious beliefs for their support and the whole balance of their lives, and may be susceptible to persuasion from someone whom they believe to be more experienced.. So I propose to lay out some of the congruities thrown up by fiction, heresy, paganism and pure greed.

Right down the ages, from before Roman times, up to and including the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, those in control have used religion as a goad, or an excuse, to achieve their ends. What I find incongruous about this fact is that the masses allow themselves to go along with these fictions so contrary to the basic aims of the particular religions. The pilots of Germany and Italy during the Spanish civil war, were blessed by the then Pope. Kamikaze pilots of World War II, the suicide bombers so prevalent today, and indeed their families and friends, one assumes, view that their acts will take these chosen people from their mundane world and place them in a Nirvana. There is of course the possibility that over and above the religious belief is a desire for acknowledgement and excitement. The Crusaders, I think, in many cases, were misled, most had actually no idea of the Koran, the religious maxims, nor the history and art of Islam. And most were probably more interested in what they could get out of it materially, than spiritually.

The fact that the creation of the world and all that it containes is so remarkable, so unbelievably complex and yet so logical, creates a mental vacuum which has to be filled in order to explain these complexities, and so from the very beginning, man has invented his own measures of achieving these aims. To some, for no logical reason, they look upon the Creator as a benign, omnipotent, omnipresent deity, who will make everything right, whereas if there is such a thing, it is totally blind, is insensitive to the needs of its charges, and this includes the animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom, and is totally permissive when it comes to atrocities committed in the name of religion.. And yet this philosophy, called religion, if anything, teaches us how to live together amicably, courteously, and with consideration for others. The fact that religious beliefs probably never were totally accepted, least of all by those expounding their merits, seems to indicate that the social graces are more important than the religious ones.

How does it all add up? We have bad behaviour among the young, a tinkering government bent on flying kites instead of legislating We are taxed beyond reason in every sphere, and our lives are less gregarious.

Let us look at the young. Bad behaviour could be expected, because the plight of a lot of the young people today is so different from the childhood of myself and my children. The better off treat their children better than we were ever treated. However, with few recreational facilities, 24,7 TV, the iniquitous website, latchkey children that are on the increase, and the loss of the extended family, children are left very much to their own devices, and these too are few and far between. It is unsurprising therefore, they congregate in gangs, that there is gang warfare, which not necessarily takes the form of inter-gang fighting, but a war against the affluent. All the time you have working single parents, the problem will remain, because parental influence has diminished incredibly. The State is expected to cope.

It is costing the nation money for policing, insuring against, and clearing up after the damage caused by young people. Might it be cheaper to provide them with something enjoyable to do? The housing legislation encourages young women to have children in order to obtain a dwelling, The problem will worsen. The escalating breakup of marriages needs to be addressed as this too contributes to the situation. From my own experience, I beg those in authority not to be penny-pinching in any solution they may consider. What is put in place must be professional, of a high-quality, and funded for a long haul, as habits are not changed overnight. To enter a badly decorated, and furnished youth club, is intensely off-putting – I know!. We need much more, confidential, professional help on tap for the young to beat drugs, loneliness, and the other ills besetting them, something similar to ChildLine.

One issue influencing the finances of the young is inheritance. We were frugal by necessity, and have saved enough for a comfortable old age. Now we’re finding that the family home, which basically was always sacrosanct, a safe investment, (only the very wealthy paid inheritance tax) is now being taken from us piecemeal with payments for nursing, taxes and diminishing income. The false rise in the value of property, is now presenting the elderly with a dichotomy. They wish to pass on the money to the younger generations to get them out of their own financial difficulties. With swathing inheritance taxation, avoidance takes a number of forms, one of which is to pass on the house at least seven years before you expect to die. This however, with the insecurity of marriage, ceases to ensure that the value of the property will go to those intended, as a divorce among the legatees might create a settlement whereby that portion of the property would go to somebody entirely different.

I fear this government is more interested in covering its losses than in looking after the welfare of the population. I have already referred to the penal system elsewhere, but must touch again here. Due to overcrowding and underfunding, there is little attempt made to change the outlook and proclivities of the incarcerated, many of whom should not have been there in the first place. We are steadily building a serious problem with the influx of refugees. Drugs too are a similar problem, leftover from the 60s. Neither simple to solve, but closure of our borders, and more stringent search legislation might help to stem the flow. I don’t understand why we ever opened our borders, in the first place, we managed to avoided other EU blanket legislation.

Mid 50s to Now. The 60s psychologically, had the same effect as moving from a dark room to one with garish lighting. There were crazy fads like burning bras, a totally fatuous symbol which lasted only a very short spell. The whole aspect of clothes, hair styles especially, coloured hair and the Mohican were rampant and in my view a lot of it in bad taste. The word kitsch was now common, and peoples’ attitudes to one another seemed no longer to be as considerate and mannerly as heretofore. Those short years were the turning point that has brought us to where we are today.

Money was becoming freer, but life was hardly lavish. We still had a toe in the restrictions of the 40’s, but by the 80s people were talking in millions as they are today in billions.

In the late 50s, vast swathes of cities were being demolished and lying dormant and the areas ravaged in the Blitz were still barren. Council and Spec building was invading green-field sites out of town, supermarkets were beginning to replace the corner and high street shops. Dual carriageways and motorways were creeping onto the landscape, and flying as a daily means of transport was now enjoyed by all. The Coronation introduced a lot of us to TV, but its real hold was yet to come. Mass production was affecting prices, especially cars, with the result there was a rising increase in traffic. It was in 1963 one of the most stupid acts of Parliament occurred when Beeching was allowed to decimate the rail miles of the UK rail network, and leave us with the transport problems we have today. It was also in the late 60s and 1970 that Rock festivals became popular.

Social and leisure changes, more than anything, have smudged the British class system, progressively since the 60’s The cult of the ‘Personality’, more than anything. There is still the Aristocracy. There is no longer a working class or middle class, there are just the very poor, the impecunious, the comfortably off, the wealthy and the filthy rich – take your pick! Some plumbers earn more than doctors; rock stars could buy a bank. Money is tending to be the yard stick of today, not moral values, social skills, or plain respect for one another, and this trend, especially among the disadvantaged and the young is growing at an alarming rate.

The mid 70s era was when Princess Diana came onto the scene, and the populace at large became aware for the first time of how voracious the paparazzi were. Prior to this it was the Continental Press that generated the scandals of royalty, and ‘names’, and blew sundry whistles. It was in this era we saw hordes of people with cameras scrambling for the same picture and making life miserable for these poor individuals. The news of today merely demonstrates that we never learn from the past. Having one’s photograph taken is one thing, but being almost trampled to death is unacceptable, and I’ve never understood why there has not been a law which reduces the number of people taking photographs to a sensible few. More to the point, the reward for the taking of photographs, or giving one’s view on a particular incident, should not be a six figure sum, which to some is too irresistible. It should be so little, that conscience rather than greed has at least a hope of being effective. Legislation to this effect is long overdue. The government seems to forget that the changes taken in the 60s included the upsurge of ‘greed at any price’.

Part 4 delineates possible lines of thought with respect to solutions